Subtitles and Transcript

Charmian Gooch

0:11
When we talk about corruption,there are typical types of individuals that spring to mind.

0:17
There's the former Soviet megalomaniacs.Saparmurat Niyazov, he was one of them.Until his death in 2006,he was the all-powerful leader of Turkmenistan,a Central Asian country rich in natural gas.Now, he really loved to issue presidential decrees.And one renamed the months of the yearincluding after himself and his mother.He spent millions of dollarscreating a bizarre personality cult,and his crowning glory was the buildingof a 40-foot-high gold-plated statue of himselfwhich stood proudly in the capital's central squareand rotated to follow the sun.He was a slightly unusual guy.

1:00
And then there's that cliché,the African dictator or minister or official.There's Teodorín Obiang.So his daddy is president for life of Equatorial Guinea,a West African nation that has exportedbillions of dollars of oil since the 1990sand yet has a truly appalling human rights record.The vast majority of its peopleare living in really miserable povertydespite an income per capita that's on a parwith that of Portugal.So Obiang junior, well, he buys himselfa $30 million mansion in Malibu, California.I've been up to its front gates.I can tell you it's a magnificent spread.He bought an €18 million art collectionthat used to belong to fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent,a stack of fabulous sports cars,some costing a million dollars apiece --oh, and a Gulfstream jet, too.Now get this:Until recently, he was earning an official monthly salaryof less than 7,000 dollars.

2:08
And there's Dan Etete.Well, he was the former oil minister of Nigeriaunder President Abacha,and it just so happens he's a convicted money launderer too.We've spent a great deal of timeinvestigating a $1 billion --that's right, a $1 billion —oil deal that he was involved with,and what we found was pretty shocking,but more about that later.

2:32
So it's easy to think that corruption happenssomewhere over there,carried out by a bunch of greedy despotsand individuals up to no good in countriesthat we, personally, may know very little aboutand feel really unconnected toand unaffected by what might be going on.But does it just happen over there?

2:54
Well, at 22, I was very lucky.My first job out of universitywas investigating the illegal trade in African ivory.And that's how my relationship with corruption really began.In 1993, with two friends who were colleagues,Simon Taylor and Patrick Alley,we set up an organization called Global Witness.Our first campaign was investigating the roleof illegal logging in funding the war in Cambodia.

3:24
So a few years later, and it's now 1997,and I'm in Angola undercover investigating blood diamonds.Perhaps you saw the film,the Hollywood film "Blood Diamond,"the one with Leonardo DiCaprio.Well, some of that sprang from our work.Luanda, it was full of land mine victimswho were struggling to survive on the streetsand war orphans living in sewers under the streets,and a tiny, very wealthy elitewho gossiped about shopping trips to Brazil and Portugal.And it was a slightly crazy place.

3:57
So I'm sitting in a hot and very stuffy hotel roomfeeling just totally overwhelmed.But it wasn't about blood diamonds.Because I'd been speaking to lots of people therewho, well, they talked about a different problem:that of a massive web of corruption on a global scaleand millions of oil dollars going missing.And for what was then a very small organizationof just a few people,trying to even begin to think how we might tackle thatwas an enormous challenge.And in the years that I've been,and we've all been campaigning and investigating,I've repeatedly seen that what makes corruptionon a global, massive scale possible,well it isn't just greed or the misuse of poweror that nebulous phrase "weak governance."I mean, yes, it's all of those,but corruption, it's made possible by the actionsof global facilitators.

4:50
So let's go back to some of those people I talked about earlier.Now, they're all people we've investigated,and they're all people who couldn't do what they do alone.Take Obiang junior. Well, he didn't end upwith high-end art and luxury houses without help.He did business with global banks.A bank in Paris held accounts of companies controlled by him,one of which was used to buy the art,and American banks, well, they funneled73 million dollars into the States,some of which was used to buy that California mansion.And he didn't do all of this in his own name either.He used shell companies.He used one to buy the property, and another,which was in somebody else's name,to pay the huge bills it cost to run the place.

5:35
And then there's Dan Etete.Well, when he was oil minister,he awarded an oil block now worth over a billion dollarsto a company that, guess what, yeah,he was the hidden owner of.Now, it was then much later traded onwith the kind assistance of the Nigerian government --now I have to be careful what I say here —to subsidiaries of Shell and the Italian Eni,two of the biggest oil companies around.

6:05
So the reality is, is that the engine of corruption,well, it exists far beyond the shores of countrieslike Equatorial Guinea or Nigeria or Turkmenistan.This engine, well, it's drivenby our international banking system,by the problem of anonymous shell companies,and by the secrecy that we have affordedbig oil, gas and mining operations,and, most of all, by the failure of our politiciansto back up their rhetoric and do somethingreally meaningful and systemic to tackle this stuff.

6:36
Now let's take the banks first.Well, it's not going to come as any surprisefor me to tell you that banks accept dirty money,but they prioritize their profits in other destructive ways too.For example, in Sarawak, Malaysia.Now this region, it has just five percentof its forests left intact. Five percent.So how did that happen?Well, because an elite and its facilitatorshave been making millions of dollarsfrom supporting logging on an industrial scalefor many years.So we sent an undercover investigator into secretly film meetings with members of the ruling elite,and the resulting footage, well, it made some people very angry,and you can see that on YouTube,but it proved what we had long suspected,because it showed how the state's chief minister,despite his later denials,used his control over land and forest licensesto enrich himself and his family.And HSBC, well, we know that HSBC bankrolledthe region's largest logging companiesthat were responsible for some of that destructionin Sarawak and elsewhere.The bank violated its own sustainability policies in the process,but it earned around 130 million dollars.Now shortly after our exposé,very shortly after our exposé earlier this year,the bank announced a policy review on this.And is this progress? Maybe,but we're going to be keeping a very close eyeon that case.

8:14
And then there's the problem of anonymous shell companies.Well, we've all heard about what they are, I think,and we all know they're used quite a bitby people and companies who are trying to avoidpaying their proper dues to society,also known as taxes.But what doesn't usually come to lightis how shell companies are used to stealhuge sums of money, transformational sums of money,from poor countries.In virtually every case of corruption that we've investigated,shell companies have appeared,and sometimes it's been impossible to find outwho is really involved in the deal.

8:55
A recent study by the World Banklooked at 200 cases of corruption.It found that over 70 percent of those caseshad used anonymous shell companies,totaling almost 56 billion dollars.Now many of these companies were in Americaor the United Kingdom,its overseas territories and Crown dependencies,and so it's not just an offshore problem,it's an on-shore one too.You see, shell companies, they're centralto the secret deals which may benefit wealthy elitesrather than ordinary citizens.

9:28
One striking recent case that we've investigatedis how the government in the Democratic Republic of Congosold off a series of valuable, state-owned mining assetsto shell companies in the British Virgin Islands.So we spoke to sources in country,trawled through company documents and other informationtrying to piece together a really true picture of the deal.And we were alarmed to find that these shell companieshad quickly flipped many of the assets onfor huge profits to major international mining companieslisted in London.Now, the Africa Progress Panel, led by Kofi Annan,they've calculated that Congo may have lostmore than 1.3 billion dollars from these deals.That's almost twicethe country's annual health and education budget combined.And will the people of Congo, will they ever get their money back?Well, the answer to that question,and who was really involved and what really happened,well that's going to probably remain locked awayin the secretive company registries of the British Virgin Islandsand elsewhere unless we all do something about it.

10:40
And how about the oil, gas and mining companies?Okay, maybe it's a bit of a cliché to talk about them.Corruption in that sector, no surprise.There's corruption everywhere, so why focus on that sector?Well, because there's a lot at stake.In 2011, natural resource exportsoutweighed aid flows by almost 19 to onein Africa, Asia and Latin America. Nineteen to one.Now that's a hell of a lot of schools and universitiesand hospitals and business startups,many of which haven't materialized and never willbecause some of that money has simply been stolen away.

11:18
Now let's go back to the oil and mining companies,and let's go back to Dan Etete and that $1 billion deal.And now forgive me, I'm going to read the next bitbecause it's a very live issue, and our lawyershave been through this in some detailand they want me to get it right.

11:35
Now, on the surface, the deal appeared straightforward.Subsidiaries of Shell and Enipaid the Nigerian government for the block.The Nigerian government transferredprecisely the same amount, to the very dollar,to an account earmarked for a shell companywhose hidden owner was Etete.Now, that's not bad going for a convicted money launderer.And here's the thing.After many months of digging aroundand reading through hundreds of pages of court documents,we found evidence that, in fact,Shell and Eni had known that the fundswould be transferred to that shell company,and frankly, it's hard to believe they didn't knowwho they were really dealing with there.

12:21
Now, it just shouldn't take these sorts of effortsto find out where the money in deals like this went.I mean, these are state assets.They're supposed to be used for the benefitof the people in the country.But in some countries, citizens and journalistswho are trying to expose stories like thishave been harassed and arrestedand some have even risked their lives to do so.

12:43
And finally, well, there are those who believethat corruption is unavoidable.It's just how some business is done.It's too complex and difficult to change.So in effect, what? We just accept it.But as a campaigner and investigator,I have a different view,because I've seen what can happenwhen an idea gains momentum.In the oil and mining sector, for example,there is now the beginningof a truly worldwide transparency standardthat could tackle some of these problems.In 1999, when Global Witness calledfor oil companies to make payments on deals transparent,well, some people laughed at the extreme naivetéof that small idea.But literally hundreds of civil society groupsfrom around the world came togetherto fight for transparency,and now it's fast becoming the norm and the law.Two thirds of the valueof the world's oil and mining companiesare now covered by transparency laws. Two thirds.

13:46
So this is change happening.This is progress.But we're not there yet, by far.Because it really isn't about corruptionsomewhere over there, is it?In a globalized world, corruptionis a truly globalized business,and one that needs global solutions,supported and pushed by us all, as global citizens,right here.